Catching up on Coloring the News by William McGowan, a marvelously depressing book (just about my favorite kind) that analyzes, almost psychoanalyzes, the diversity orthodoxy as practiced by acolytes throughout the media who daily pledge Diversity and Social Justice for all.The book came out shortly after 9/11/01 at a time when my own reading list skewed jihadist (alas). Question is, now that we, as a nation, have elected our FBP (first black prez) do we finally get to forget about turning individual human beings into colored game counters? Do we get to stop worrying about "achieving diversity" through the quotas and set-asides that the powers-that-be presently use to order our society?

Um, no.

Indeed, more is on the way. From the New York Times:

"TV Casting May Feel an Obama Effect":

It may say something about the state of American television that there is one more black president-elect...

What Robert Spencer calls "the reliably dhimmi Wall Street Journal" lives up to its reputation this weekend in an interview by James Taranto of Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, one of the great and brave and precious few defenders of Western civilization to fight against its existential and intertwining enemies, cultural relativism and Islam.

The WSJ headline reveals the soft, gooey underpinnings on which the interview is premised: `Our Culture Is Better'--a quote from Wilders--over the following subhead: "Champion of Freedom or Anti-Islamic Provacateur? Both." Taranto writes:

By his own description, Geert Wilders is not a typical Dutch politician. "We are a country of consensus," he tells me on a recent Saturday morning at his midtown Manhattan hotel. "I hate consensus. I like confrontation. I am not a consensus politician. . . . This is something that is really very un-Dutch."

Below is a letter from a favorite reader of mine, a patriotic American who is deeply concerned, and with good reason, about the still-unsettled notion that Barack Obama is not an American-born citizen of the United States, and therefore not eligible to become the nation's 44th president. (Atlas Shrugs has been breaking news on this story for months.) What concerns this reader just as much is the media failure to demand adequate proof of citizenship from Obama that would lay the matter to rest (one way or another).

What prompted today's letter is a radio interview conducted recently by "Mike in the Morning" out of Detroit (link below) of a man identifying himelf as Peter Ogego, the Kenyan ambassador the US. At about 12:34 into the interview, in answer to a question about whether Obama's Kenyan birthplace is a good spot to visit, and whether there might one...

If you're wondering what finally happened when it came time for the five-year-old "pilgrims" of Condit school to sup with the five-year-old "indians" of Mountain View school out in Claremont, California (where PC rules had nixed poster-paper Indian headbands and noodle necklaces as "racist") it turns out that half of the invited "Indians" showed up in costume as planned--and in (parental) defiance of the PC school rules. No politically incorrect kiddies were ejected from their feast, which is a good thing. Claremont Insider reports that as the kindergartners headed into school...

...the cameras rolled and about a dozen protesters unfurled make-shift signs saying, "You are not honoring...

Here is a link to Steve Sailer's blog entries at VDARE.com. He's the only writer I know of who is digging deep into the subprime mortgate meltdown via the intensive social engineering that precipitated the crisis. Such manipulative governmental utopianism drove not ony Democrats, such as Carter and Clinton, but also Karl Rove and George W. Bush. Indeed, the W Bush administration appears to bear most of the responsibility for implementing politically correct policies that stripped away good, old fashioned criteria for mortgages, such as down payments and good credit, kicking off Wall Street's deranged financial orgy we are now, I guess, going to be paying for over the next 700 billion years.

For example, yesterday Sailer blogged about a 2002 article in Realty Times that reported on Bush’s plan to increase minority homeownership by 5.5 million households. Sailer writes:

A report from the Los Angeles Times (via Drudge) titled "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold"--I mean, "Claremont parents clash over kindgergarten Thanksgiving costumes." To prevent readers from growing too dispirited over the PC assault and takeover of our culture depicted in the story, keep in mind that there seems be a Parents Revolt brewing.

For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made...

Thanks very much and sincerely to all the many readers who, having read that the editor of the Evening Sun (Hanover, PA) was thinking aloud about "pulling the plug" on my column, wrote in to explain why he shouldn't oughta do that.

Here is the editor's response cum change-of-heart. (And no, I don't really understand what he's talking about either, but my column will continue to run "most Saturdays" in the paper.)

This week's column notes the strange prominence of Somalis in the news concerning piracy, immigration fraud and Minnesota politics. Hmmm.

One bit of research that didn't fit into the column concerns the entry of Somalis into Minnesota politics where, as a constituency, their political will is expresing itself in terms more Somalian than American--in the following case to Amy Klobuchar, who in 2006 was running for the US Senate seat she ultimately won. From the Minnesota Spokesman Recorder of November 15, 2006:

On October 21 this year, Klobuchar attended the Somali Action Alliance candidate forum where she was asked several yes-or-no questions:
• If elected, will you work with the community to find a permanent solution to the smooth operation...

John Zogby recently polled 500 Obama voters, 55% of whom have a college degree and 90% of whom have a high-school diploma. Zogby asked 12 multiple-choice questions. A measly 2.4% got at least 11 correct, and a practically invisible .5% aced the questionnaire. As for the rest, via Hot Air:
57.4 could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
81.8 could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
82.6 could NOT correctly say that Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket...

In what was a foregone formality, the European Parliament voted to lift MEP Frank Vanheck's parliamentary immunity today. The vote was 564 Eurocrats for and 61 goog guys against--with 42 really tough hombres abstaining. Now, Belgium can now proceed with its show trial against Vanhecke on "racism" charges in order to strip this popular Flemish politician of the Vlaams Belang party of his "political rights"-- a common if totalitarian Belgian remedy to crush political dissent. Baron Bodissey has the update.

I've been wondering what turnaround pro Mitt Romney would say about the economic crisis. Here's a good answer: "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt." He writes:

I have several prescriptions for Detroit’s automakers.
First, their huge disadvantage in costs relative to foreign brands must be eliminated. That means new labor agreements to align pay and benefits to match those of workers at competitors like BMW, Honda, Nissan and Toyota. Furthermore, retiree benefits must be reduced so that the total burden per auto for domestic makers is not higher than that of foreign producers.
That extra burden is estimated to be more than $2,000 per car. Think what that means: Ford, for example, needs to cut $2,000 worth of features and quality out of its Taurus to compete with Toyota’s Avalon....

Islamonline, owned by Sheik Yusef Al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, this week visits the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek, which is just a short drive from the European Union colossus, NATO and other hulking, glass-and-steel fixtures of the "capital of Europe." What a perfect moment to feature some of my snaps from my summertime excursion to Molenbeek, where, as Islamonline writes:

In the immigrant-dominated neighborhood ... it is hardly possible to come across a blue-eyed or blonde haired person. Walking down Molenbeek streets, one cannot mistake the Islamic aura and spirit coloring the neighborhood. Young women in colorful hijab and young men sporting beards are the common face....

To the Editor:
I am responding to Editor Marc Charisse’s column about my work, a column I found striking for its mud-slinging crudity. In Charisse’s words, my work, the product of careful research and reporting, may be summed up thus: West “never met a Muslim she didn’t hate.” There is no more apt word than “grotesque” to describe such an irresponsible and flippant mischaracterization of my weekly column, which very often grapples with the terrible, largely unspoken reality that Western liberties—freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, equality before the law, including women’s rights and the rights of non-Muslims—are increasingly threatened by a growing deference to the laws of Islam. To underscore my point, I don’t write...

Back in September, I thanked Sierra Vista (AZ) Herald readers whose overwhelming response in favor of my column persuaded the paper's editor to retain it following his unusual act, in effect, of putting his editorial decision to a vote. Now comes an out and out broadside against me and my work from the editor of the Hanover (PA) Evening Sun. In a column of his own, Editor Marc Charisse announced he's "getting ready to pull the plug on" yours truly. (You may click here to leave comments at the bottom of his column.) Charisse writes:

I am, however, getting ready to pull the plug on Diana West, whose column often appears on Saturdays in The Evening Sun.

In an October 2007 column written when we had to replace some of our other columnists, I said West "never met a Muslim she didn't hate."

One of my early glossy mag assignments was for the late Clay Felker just as his Manhattan, Inc. was morphing into the relatively short-lived M Inc. The story studied the Washington power game of leaks--trial balloon leaks, manipulation leaks, vindictive leaks, strategic leaks, leak leaks. It came to mind today after many, many years on reading this story in Haaretz:

A senior adviser to Barack Obama on Sunday denied reports that the U.S. president-elect plans to throw his weight behind the 2002 Arab peace plan, which calls for Israel to withdraw from all territories captured during the 1967 Six-Day War in exchange for normalized ties with the Arab world.

This particular "senior adviser" is named and quoted as Dennis Ross, who is "denying reports" first published yesterday in the Times of London...

Writing at The American Thinker, Jim Boulet. Jr. outlines an terrifyingly plausible strategy by which Barack Obama can oppose the so-called Fairness Doctrine and still roll up conservative talk radio.

The watchword is "localism." And, as Boulet tells it, "Obama needs only three votes from the five-member FCC to define localism is such a way that no radio station would dare air any syndicated conservative programming."

A little late out of the box, last week's column, plus some additional commentary:

How dumb does President-elect Barack Obama think we are?

Let me rephrase the question: Are we as dumb as Obama thinks?

Before answering, let me lay out the background that prompts the question. Last spring, back when Hamas, the Muslim-Brotherhood-linked terror group dedicated to the annihilation of Israel through jihad, endorsed the Obama's candidacy, the young Democratic candidate was still assumed to falter when it came to support for Israel, the United States' greatest and most beleaguered ally in the Middle East. Obama may well have rejected Hamas's support, but those were still the days when the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and sidekick Lewis Farrakhan were making at least some news for both their anti-Semitic, anti-white views and their support for Obama. Those were also still...

Last week, an elderly restaurant owner in Hollywood was given the Third Degree for contributing $100 to California's Prop 8, which passed and defines marriage as being between a man and a woman. "I cannot change a lifetime of faith," she said in answer as to whether she would now consider donating money to overturn Prop 8 in order to buy off anti-Prop 8 protestors then threatening the restaurant with a boycott and disturbances.

Well, I don't think the owner has changed her faith, but the restaurant has just made a very public donation to a group raising money to overturn Prop 8. The LA Times updates this story via Michelle Malkin (video below):

Employees of the Los Angeles restaurant that came under fire this week after a manager gave $100 to the campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California said they had made a $500 contribution to the advocacy group that is raising money...

Mike S. Adams reports from Pepperdine University in Malibu, which, clever dog, charges $49,430 per year to program students into politically compliant automatons. The story is about some College Republican exceptions to the PC rule who pushed back. You see, the CRs wanted to publicize a pre-Election meeting to argue against Barack Obama's socialism; however, College Authorities decided linking Obama and "socialism" was beyond College-Sanctioned discourse. Here is a recap of an exchange between one of the students and Don Lawrence, the campus commissar, I mean, "Director of Intercultural Affairs":

Lawrence: She wasn’t allowed to approve your posters. Let me see them.
([Student] Rothfus showed him).
Lawrence: You can’t have these up because...

We Are Family? Somali meat-packers on strike in Greeley, Colorado during Ramadan.

Tout Washington, I read in today's New York Times, is "transfixed" by the mystery of which elite ($28K-ish per annum) private school will boast two presidential daughters come January. That means--naturally, therefore, of course, what else?--there is no time or attention for this completely scandalous story of massive refugee fraud reported on first by Refugee Resettlement Watch. RRW writes:

Unbelievable! Take note citizens of welcoming towns like Ft. Morgan and Greeley, CO, or not so thrilled towns like Postville, IA, Shelbyville, TN, and Grand Island, NE, the US State Department has...

Barry Rubin, director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, provides a clarifying prism through which Westerners may better recognize cultural difference in their appraisals of what he calls MEWorld--Middle East World. He writes:

Let me stress that the following is not typical but it is revealing. On November 12, 2008, MEMRI published its video clip No. 1903 which you can see here. It is from a television show aired on October 31, 2008. First, I will tell you what it says, which is profoundly shocking. But then I will give you seven reasons why it is far more shocking than you thought.
The person being interviewed proposes that Arab men sexually harass Israeli women as a new means of resistance against Israel. "They are fair game for all Arabs," the interviewee explains, because they "rape the...

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party.

The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem....

Here is an 11/14 Instapundit report from Michael Yon, who is in Iraq. The post begins with a quotation: "THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON." Yon goes to to say: "There's nothing going on. I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on. ... I've been asking Iraqis, 'do you think the violence will kick up again,' but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they're usually dour."

Elsewhere, there was a string of bombings in Baghdad yesterday, but the fact remains that Americans, myself very much included, are eager to declare the war over. But I still have a fundamental, non-answered--and worse, non-asked!--question about what it is we stand to win in Iraq--and,...

Photo: The car and decals the United States Military won't allow Jesse Nieto, a 25-year Marine veteran whose son Marc was killed by jihadists on the USS Cole in 2000, to drive into Arlington Cemetery.

Jihadwatch posted a particularly mind-blowing story today that unfortunately fits in with my theme of the day about mainstream society's mission to outlaw, repress and thoroughly stamp out strains of expression that come under the banner of traditionalism. Country; marriage; patriotism; conservative dissent; even McCain-Palin--you name it, it is now anathema in the Public Square.

This "progressive"-type neo-Puritanism extends also to the United States Military--a fact that is particularly mind-blowing. Seems Jesse Nieto, 25-year Marine veteran whose son Marc was among the 17 US sailors killed in a jihadist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, has a car with some decals the military wants removed. As Nieto's...

Conservatism isn't simply in political retreat, it is fast travelling beyond the pale, fast becoming anathema in America. And not just "conservatism"--any bumper sticker sentiment that denies due reverence for the precepts of progressivesm as exemplified by the leftward evolving sensibility of the media and cultural mainstream. We had support for McCain-Palin support garner a concussion for a college freshman here; an arrest for a passer-by here; and now general opprobrium and even curses here--and toward a middle schooler!

It is anything that smacks of the traditional that is under assault now...

Over at the indispensable Atlas Shrugs, I picked up a sobering--no, actually, quite terrifying--rumination on the colossal collapse in progress, and the very real perils to liberty that lie ahead in the potentially/seemingly dictatorial tendencies of the coming Obama era. It is a big-picture perspective linking many significant developments and deserves serious consideration. When I came across it, I had just finished reading this alarming story out of Minnesota, highlighted by Powerline, about an Augsburg College...

Photo: Here you see Filip Dewinter pointing out to me the historic sights of Antwerp's picturesque central square, outside the City Council building where he leads the Vlaams Belang contingent.

Baron Bodissey of the Gates of Vienna has posted tonight about the evil and ongoing campaign of character assassination against Filip Dewinter and his Flemish secessionist, anti-Islamization party Vlaams Belang in Belgium. Having interviewed Dewinter on several separate occasions--a couple of times in Antwerp last summer, once in Washington last year--I only wish the US had candidates of his strength, purpose and calibre. I know of no American politician who understands the historic sweep of the jihad as Dewinter does, and who is so forthright, outspoken and active in his stand against it. As far as the completely spurious and thoroughly deranged charges against him of anti-Semitism and crypto-Nazism go, they are, well, spurious and thoroughly deranged. Last summer I asked him to explain his stand against Islamization. He replied:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

--Lt. Col. John McCrae (1915), Canadian Army

On this Veterans Day, 2008, the New York Times ran an op-ed noting the durability of the red poppy as a symbol of remembrance of "The Great War" that came to an end 90 years ago today. Strange as it sounds, I never connected the paper red poppies which, particularly in England, would sprout at this time every...

"Ominous" doesn't begin to describe the reflexive repressiveness evident in this video (below) of post-election Philadelphia as police arrest a young man wearing a McCain-Palin t-shirt at an Obama victory celebration (via Gates of Vienna). The police reaction reminded me of this incident at the Democratic National Convention, only worse--or maybe it the jeering crowd that intensified my reaction. Of course, the police in both cases were merely acting in accord such incidents as these that took place during the Obama campaign....

This is America?

Before you watch, you may wish to turn off the popups in the video. Click on the little triangle at the lower right corner of the video. This brings up a drop-up with 3 squares. The topmost is a dog-eared square. Hover your cursor over it and a tooltip appears saying ‘turn off annotations’. Click on the square to do so.

Alexandra Colen, a Vlaams Belang member of the Belgian pariiament (who happens also to be a dear friend of mine), sees through the near-universal ecstasy over Barack Obama across Belgium's political spectrum (Vlaams Belang excepted) to its appalling but irrefutable logic: America is becoming Belgian.

Last Tuesday, the Americans voted like Belgians. Obama is even more popular here than in the US. Last week, a poll among the students of the renowned University of Leuven (Louvain), the oldest in the Netherlands, showed that 98% of them preferred Obama as US president. For the past six years the university has been regularly polling its students on political issues. “The result has never been as unanimous as now,” Prof. Marc Hooghe said.

In the "Guess I Got Under Her Skin" category, a letter to the editor of Evening Sun in Hanover, PA:

Editor:
I am writing in response to your column in Sunday's Evening Sun [Nov. 2] in which you analyze the columnists in the past few weeks' issues. You determined that there were roughly seven pro-McCain and seven pro-Obama columns, and concluded that your paper is presenting a balanced view of the political climate in this country.

This is the Prelude to Not Good Enough.

Although I appreciate the fact that you wish to reflect in your paper the views of your constituency, I need to point out one element that I found missing in your analysis, and that is that several of the columnists who are said to represent the views of the "right" - Diana West, in particular - are actually so far off the mark as to be incendiary and inflammatory, and frankly, to offer outright lies.

Arizona's Supreme Court Justice has accepted a tongue-lashing from the state's Hispanic Bar Association--aka "Los Abagados"--regarding the "inflammatory" use of the words "illegal" and "aliens" in state courtrooms (via Judicial Watch via Michelle Malkin). Such terms, the group says, are used as "an instrument of hate," adding: "There is no place in the today's immigration debate for the term "illegal" to describe a person...."

Not only did the Chief Justice accept her tongue-lashing, she thanked them for it, and assured the Hispanic legal group that she was going to make sure "the Commission on Minorities in the Judiciary would consider whether any further distribution of your request...

This week's offering, "You Elected a Man, not a Moral Judgment" (nor the end of the Civil War, nor the presidency of RFK) is here.

NB: A reader from Texas has already picked up on how miraculous it is that in former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin's retelling, Abraham Lincoln seems to have supplied James Madison with the phrase "a more perfect union," which, of course, originates in the preamble to the Constitution. Lincoln quoted the phrase in his first Inaugural Address in 1861--as did John Adams in his Inaugural Address in 1797, John Quincy Adams in 1825, Benjamin Harrison in 1889, and Bill Clnton in 1997.

If the anonymously carping McCain aides currently hurling muck on Sarah Palin--whose good grace, instincts and pluck surpass that of the other presidential-ticket candidates combined--are any measure of the man, it's another reason his defeat doesn't make the heart ache.

Imposition of some form of the Fairness Doctrine likely will be one of the Democrats' agenda items for the first 100 days of the new administration. It's important that conservatives begin working now to stop it.

Talk radio is the most important medium conservatives have. It's the only medium conservatives dominate. But liberals aren't content to have only NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, AP, Reuters, Newsweek, Time, the NY Times, Washington Post, Hollywood, etc. Stray conservative thoughts might escape into the population, you know.

The behavior of the mainstream media during the preceding campaign emphasizes the significance of the stakes should the Fairness Doctrine become law. The most important person by far in the conservative...

Strangely enough, on the morning after the morning after I don't feel so bad. Part of the reason is because John McCain was never my candidate. That is, I voted for him, but I mainly voted against Barack Obama as a defensive act against the specter of "change" Obama promises to bring this already plenty great country. I don't like Obama's patronizing attitudes toward all of us "little people" wasting away as victims in need of his savior-style government, his redistributive policies, his anti-American allies and cheerleaders--both in his personal past and now making themselves heard around the world--or his political record such as it is, as I've already made clear in a string of columns. And these were columns, as I was well aware on writing them, that barely mentioned John McCain.

In other words, there is no sense of gaping loss at what might have been.

Not to skunkify the full-swinging garden party or anything, but Gates of Vienna is already picking up more than "globalization of joy" in the world's reaction to the results of yesterday's election. First, there is this Israeli newsvideo about a Jordanian report claiming Obama secretly promised Mahmouod Abbas that he would support Palestinian claims on East Jerusalem; and then there is this Financial Times report on Russia, which has announced it intends to place missiles near the Polish border.

Back to global joy-- which extends even to the Marxist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) party members caught by the AP last night (above) celebrating the Obama victory in El Salvador.

On-camera histrionics over the Obama victory are being duly noted, but it is CNN's Christianne Amanpour's little memoir of Election Day morning in NYC that takes the cake (A) because it is written, and, therefore, required at least some reflection; and (B) because it implies a breathtaking tendency to see the US--as led by non-black, non-Democratic presidents, that is--with hopeless dictatorships whose people presumably yearn for democracy (sometimes supplied, quite quixotically, by the US....). She writes:

Finding myself in New York City this U.S. election Day, I saw scenes that reminded me of the first democratic elections I covered in Afghanistan in 2004, or Iraq in 2005.

Scenes that reminded me of the historic election in South Africa in 1994...

In looking for news about propositions against affirmative action in Nebraska and Colorado--Nebraska passed, Colorado too close to call--I came across this Politico.com story from Monday on how race-based preferences would fare in the next administration. Interestingly enough, both Ward Connerly and Linda Chavez--opponents of affirmative action and McCain supporters--believe Obama is likely to end race-based preferences; while Goodwin Liu, a proponent of racial preferences, believes Obama will actually improve them.

Obama is what I have called a "bargainer" -- a black who says to whites, "I will never presume that you are racist if you will not hold my race against me." Whites become enthralled with bargainers out of gratitude for the presumption of innocence they offer. Bargainers relieve their anxiety about being white and, for this gift of trust, bargainers are often rewarded with a kind of halo.
Obama's post-racial idealism told whites the one thing they most wanted to hear: America had essentially contained the evil of racism to the point at which it was no longer a serious barrier to black advancement. Thus, whites became enchanted enough with Obama to become his political base. It was Iowa -- 95% white -- that made him a contender. Blacks came his way only after he won enough white voters to be a plausible candidate. ...